Cockfight - For Those Who Missed It

Cockfight was a four-piece band in the early to late Nineties that combined acid-rock metal guitar with jazz white-noise saxophone to an industrial machine punk rock beat, all dressed up in glittery glam clothes. You got a little Cramps, a little GBH, a little Sun Ra, and even some Sunset Strip metal. Like most of my music projects it was a little too much for the average rock crowd. We always did well outside of Hollywood and our only fans in Hollywood were mostly gay music fans, adopting us to play their clubs and rock showcases at The Abbey and The Garage.

I formed Cockfight as my regular band Trash Can School began falling apart, due to widely divergent musical and personal differences. One night I swung by to Rebecca's rehearsal studio to pick her up after her band Bitchcraft's rehearsal. As I sat by the front door waiting for her to finish I was getting increasingly more and ore blown away by her effortless facility to alternate between lead and rhythm guitar and sing at the same time. Her abrasive guitar tone was so incendiary it reminded me of Jimi Hendrix playing on "Manic Depression" and "Fire". I didn't need three guitarists any more because she sounded like three guitarists playing at once.

The first Cockfight rhythm section featured Rita D'Albert from the Pandoras and pre-Lucha Va Voom on bass guitar. She was a good, solid player and totally fit in with our space invaders glam rock style. She even smoked silver cigarettes. On drums was Erick Blitz who looked like he belonged in The Makers, eschewing a garage rock meets glam style.

After playing a few amazing shows with drag queens like Vaginal Creme Davis, Jackie Beat and Glen Meadmore. Cockfight guest starred on Sofia Coppola's pop-up TV show "Hi-Octane", shown on Comedy Central. We played against a dragstrip hellfire backdrop painted by Rebecca and me, and the great TV segment was directed by punk film director David Markey.

More offers for TV and recording followed: Cockfight recorded "The Stoner and The Stripper" for the Flipside Records compilation "The Devil You Know, The Devil You Don't", and Rebecca even got an illustration on the CD sleeve, too. Her style production friend Elizabeth Tobias filmed a video of the song with us performing on a huge Ed Sullivan-show type stage with guest star Ron Jeremy doing a Chippendales male stripper routine for an unruly crowd of funny money wielding grandmas. Erick Blitz left the band by this point so our friend, film director Roman Coppola sat in on drums.

Cockfight took a short break for two years and with a new rhythm section recorded a seven-song CD. Bo Kjaer played bass and surf documentary filmmaker Fran Battaglia played drums. The CD featured songs that ranged from punk blasts like "Liquor Store" to psychedelic ballads like "Lil' Albino Boy" and even drummed up a propulsive cover of The Plasmatics' "Sometimes I".

Unfortunately, in spite of all the breaks Cockfight was a tough sell given the tempo of the music scene was largely driven by jangly guitar sounding college pop bands, mostly headed by bookish looking snobs with thick horn rimmed glasses and drab Science Fair Geek clothes. Cockfight's brand of atonal glam-o-rama was too rock & roll and out of step with Seattlemania.

Cockfight, for me, was the last hurrah in playing music. Our last show was at Headline Records on Melrose (thank you, Jean-Luc!). After playing in bands for over two decades I thought it was time to find other avenues to artistically express myself, with writing providing a lot more gratification than anything. With occasional guest shots sitting in with Pressurehead, Pygmy Love Circus and The Anubian Lights it was time to simply call it a day. Cockfight, the legend and the legacy: To keep it noisy and look amazing doing so, Glam Noise forever!

Cockfight CDs and downloads can be purchased here: https://www.cdbaby.com/cd/cockfightmusic

I've Got Friends: The Sunset Of Celso Chavez

On May 9, 2012, my friend and colleague Rob Zabrecky reported the sad news that Celso Chavez had passed away at 1:42 pm that afternoon from pneumonia due to complications brought on by lyme disease. The news was surprising because of all the musicians I’ve ever played with he was probably the healthiest and most physically fit.

I first met Celso in early 1989 when Lucas McClelland, my bassist, brought him to our rehearsal. Celso picked up the songs right away and brought a great positive attitude to a band of jaded cynics like us. To be perfectly honest I look back on the 1989 edition of Trash Can School with affection and nostalgia. After searching for so many years for players that shared my quest for musical exploration it was a genuine gift to have Celso, Lucas and Manny share my enjoyment in exploring new sounds and sonic landscapes.

Celso was responsible for our most memorable song, a cover of Patti Smith's “Horses”. At one of our rehearsals out of sheer boredom we started playing a feedback-laden version of Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York”, and instead of crooning the familiar opening line of “Start spreading the news, I’m leaving today”, I went into “Jesus died for somebody’s sins but not mine”. Lucas and Manny followed Celso’s and my lead and, well, the rest is history. In fact, when you hear the opening chords to our recording of “Horses” that’s Celso you’re listening to.

One of his favorite stories he liked to tell was the time we recorded that single at Radio Tokyo. When it was time to record “Phantasm III” I asked him, “Well! Are you ready to lay down your solo?”
“I’m playing the solo? No way”. (Getting nervous)
“Didn’t you prepare a solo?”
“No! What am I gonna play?”
“I don’t know but you’re gonna have to come up with something amazing in about five minutes”.
“Dude, I’m totally scared. I’ve never played a guitar solo before!”
“Perfect, you’ll be great. Take all the fear that’s inside you and pour it out of your guitar”.

Celso recorded his guitar solo in one take, a manic, screaming slice of atonal brain shred sounding like a Latino Sonny Sharrock at his most homicidal. For the rest of his life every time Celso saw me he said, “You told me I was a lead guitarist and I wouldn’t believe you but you made me believe!” His gratitude always touched me because it was genuine, like everything he felt.

In the brief time he was in the band (less than a year) he made a substantial impression on our music as he co-wrote “Baby Lust”, another one of our biggest songs. Celso’s knack for writing and arranging great, catchy rock songs was always fine tuned.

Celso shortly left Trash Can School to play with Possum Dixon, writing and recording “Friends”, a hauntingly brilliant song about the irony of friendship with layers of feedback guitar and an eerie reverbed vocal.

“I’ve got friends who sit around
And laugh each time you walk in the room
With your candy clothes and cigarettes
The way you smile and undress
I’ve got friends…”

© 1990, Apartment Music, BMI

We went our separate ways, but in 2002 I left a comment on the message board for his new band, Pill Module. He called me shortly after and we started meeting for lunch periodically. He was working for the LA Unified School District or a similar non-profit educational agency and I worked for the LA County Department of Children & Family Services. Celso was always happy to see me and fun to talk to, telling me about how proud he was to be a father and how much he loved his wife and son.

During the time I saw him I turned him on to Emmitt Rhodes and David Garza since they both played pop music with an edge, both of whom Celso never heard before. When I told him David Garza was going to play Café Largo soon we almost went, but we both lamed out and flaked.

After another lunchtime I remember taking him to the Jewelry District downtown to my favorite jeweler because he was getting a diamond necklace for his wife, Veronica. I totally hooked him up and he never stopped thanking me for it. Another time I took him down to the LA County Department of Human Resources to check out the clerical positions there because he wanted something that paid better and had better job security. He was pretty serious about keeping his life together. Eventually we drifted apart again; I guess friendship has its irony all the time.

When I think of Celso I remember a man who always maintained a positive attitude, an open mind to new ideas, and a free-spirited willingness to gamble with a crazy bandleader who always went for broke. Although the sun has set for my friend Celso, after the sunset is the coming of the stars in the sky, and the brightest star in the Hollywood sky tonight and every night is Celso Chavez.

Photography by Chris Blum

Happy Birthday Parker Posey

Every year I wish a fellow Scorpio a Happy Birthday; last year it was Alain Delon so this year I’m wishing a Happy Birthday to Parker Posey, one of my favorite actresses. A sort of modern day Louise Brooks (another Scorpio), instead of kids creaming over Audrey Hepburn they should be checking out every cool movie this nut ever starred in. She even put in an appearance in “The Coneheads” movie early in her career.

Born on November 8th, the daughter of a car dealership (“Posey Chevrolet”) mogul in Mississippi, Posey began her career acting in soap operas like “As The World Turns”. Tiring quickly of zooming tight shots before commercial breaks, Posey got small roles in movies, the most memorable (besides “Coneheads”) being in Hal Hartley’s brilliant “Amateur”, playing a punk chick commenting on the electrocuted state of a computer wizard. She looked more punk rock than most Lower East Side club girls, which probably explains how she got her big breakthrough role in “Party Girl” (1995), the funny film about a Lower East Side club girl who sets out to prove she can be a serious librarian. The standout scene is when she files all of her DJ roommate’s records in the Dewey Decimal System. (“100-200” is Jungle Music, “300-400” is Drum & Bass, “500-600” is Trance, “700-800” is House Music, etc.).

After “Party Girl” broke she became the unofficial queen of independent films in the Nineties. Other weirdo films soon followed, like “Drunks” starring Richard Lewis who tried to kick the sauce monkey by attending AA meetings, where Posey’s a member in group. “I wanted to slug whiskey just like Janis Joplin”, brags Posey with a silly, blissful grin. One of the most memorable aspects of the film was the way “I Must Be Mad” by The Craig kept playing through the movie. Weird! The cast was surprisingly star-studded for such a low budget production (Faye Dunaway, Calista Flockhart, Kevin Corrigan, etc.), but Posey steals the show.

More indie movies followed, “Dazed and Confused” (Linklater), “The Doom Generation” (Araki), and “Basquiat” (Schnabel). Her next really big picture was Christopher Guest’s brilliant “Waiting For Guffman” playing the girl from the local Dairy Queen who thinks “Red White and Blaine” is her big ticket out of town to Broadway.

Other films included “The Daytrippers” about a family who pile into their station wagon and plow through Manhattan trying to find Posey’s estranged brother-in-law and find out why he bailed on her sister (played by Hope “American Splendor” Davis).

There was also “Clockwatchers”, a great ensemble comedy co-starring Lisa Kudrow (hitting the indie movie circuit herself) and Toni Collette. The film is about a quartet of frustrated office temps waiting for something bigger to come along in their lives. The only one who appears to be a “lifer” in the temp game is Posey, whose jadedness and sarcasm gets her through the crushingly dull routine of temp work. This is easily one of her best performances to date.

She followed that with Hal Hartley’s “Henry Fool”, an utterly bizarre tale of a garbage man named Simon Grim who takes to writing pornographic poetry and finds his muse in the form of a drunken, philandering scoundrel named Henry Fool who in the course of staying at Simon's home manages to bugger both Simon’s mother and sister Fay, brilliantly played by Posey.

Big money-making movies soon followed for Posey, starring in high visibility jobs like “You’ve Got Mail”, “Scream 3”, and “Josie and The Pussycats”. By 2000 Posey was still starring in great indie pictures like “Best In Show” playing a neurotic yuppie dog owner. “Personal Velocity” was the brilliant story of a book editor who finds herself behaving more and more like the father she detested, realizing she has his arrogance and uses it to mercilessly step up in her career.

In “Fay Grim” she reprises her role from “Henry Fool”, now abandoned by Henry and notified by the CIA that his terribly written memoirs was really a code book for international terrorists, hiring her to track him down. A deadpan comic version of “The Third Man’ with Fay as the Joseph Cotten character and Henry as Harry Lime soon follows. This one was pretty strange, but again Posey turns in a stunning performance.

It’s hard to imagine catching all of Parker Posey’s movies, nine times out of ten you’ll end up finding them on IFC or The Sundance Channel, and when you do you’ll be watching an actress with her own unique sense of style, wit and humor. And, if anything else, she was the coolest judge in “Project Runway” history.

Happy Birthday Alain Delon

November 8th is here and some of my favorite actors are celebrating birthdays on the same day, like Parker Posey and Alain Delon. Since Alain Delon has been around longer I'm going to talk about him. Next year I'll get to Posey. Alain Delon has served as a sort of role model to me. I think he's a million times cooler and more sophisticated than a million other actors. I can't say he's the most likable guy on the planet (is any Frenchman?) and not every film he's made is cinema gold, but when he makes an impact, he's the greatest. Here's some of my favorites starring him:

Purple Noon (1960): Hands down the best Ripley, a man who's supposed to be charming you as he's strangling you. Delon is funny, friendly and deadly all at the same time. It's been said that Patricia Highsmith thought he was the best Ripley ever. By the way, the cinematography and scenery in this film is absolutely beautiful.

Eclipse (1962): Antonioni's classic film of Atomic Age frigidity with Delon playing a dark stock trader to Monica Vitti's icy blonde. This time he's the lover who's being spurned, quite a turnabout from his heartbreaker persona.

Joy House (1964): A gigolo on the run from a mob boss who wants him dead for banging his wife, Delon hides in a decaying mansion inhabited by two fake nuns (Jane Fonda and Lola Albright). He becomes their chauffeur/sex prisoner until the two dames fight it out over him, and he plays his evil mind games against them both. The twist ending will drive you crazy.



Once A Thief (1965): Delon's a Frisco fisherman who's getting hassled by his creepy gangster brother (Jack Palance) to rejoin the outfit. His wife Ann-Margret tells him she'll leave him if he returns to his evil ways. There's a great scene when he pulls Ann-Margret out of the nightclub in her pseudo-Playboy Bunny outfit and she's crying her ass off! Ralph Nelson shot this film in an amazing neo-realistic style. You won't even notice how stiff Delon's Anglais sounds in this one.

Le Samourai (1967): Delon plays a cool gangster in this very chic Nouvelle Vague noir. I prefer him as the moody, quiet type he plays in this movie. He seems more dangerous that way!

Spirits of the Dead (1968): "William Wilson", weird Edgar Allen Poe adaptation brought to you by American International Pictures. He plays a rakish sadist who cheats at cards playing against a black-haired Brigitte Bardot. If he wins the card game he gets to whip her naked. Guess who wins? It's okay, though, his doppelganger gives him the psych beat-down of his life.

Girl On A Motorcycle (1968): Laughably miscast as a college professor (sporting glasses and a thick sweater) who gives Marianne Faithfull her motorcycle she tools around Western Europe in until she rides to her death. See it anyway, it's very funny.

Like I said, even when he's not at his best he's still pretty damn watchable; he never lapses into retarded boyishness, which is the bane of all young actors these days, and yet he's always seemed very young to me. I guess the reason some of us look up to actors is because we don't have enough common sense to figure out how to behave unless we see somebody incredibly cool in a movie to show us how it's done. In that sense Delon is one of the best teachers I learned from. Merci et bon anniversaire, M. Delon!

What We Do Is Lousy

A Review of The Germs Biopic "What We Do Is Secret"

In the movie "Pee Wee's Big Adventure" the film ends with a highly glamorized movie about Pee Wee's exploits starring a heavily-coiffed and dashing James Brolin with his tomboy girlfriend Dottie played by TV soap ubervixen Morgan Fairchild. While it was one of the many funny moments in the film, life, as they say, imitates art.

Just like the Pee Wee movie the roles of the anatomically incorrect Germs have been cast with actors a little too anatomically correct. While Darby Crash hasn't been cast with James Brolin, he is portrayed by a bizarrely mugging Shane West who pitches Darby at a Jack Lemmon-meets-Jello Biafra intensity level, delivering the Darby manifesto with a Ryan Seacrest style of enunciation. Never mind Crash had one of the whiniest gay voices pitched at a super-nelly lisp, his gay sexuality is only hinted at here and left, of course, in the closet. Pat Smear is one of the tallest guitarists around, so it's funny to see Darby tower over Pat in the movie.

The movie begins with The Germs struggling for attention at The Orpheum Theatre, but I remember the earliest punk gigs were promoted by The Nerves at the Sunset-Gower Studios. There's no mention of drummers Cliff Hanger or Donna Rhia in the movie, but instead have been replaced by some bookish girl composite of them. Cliff Hanger was quite a flaming terror and should have gotten a smidgen of face time in the movie, but that's part of the problem with the film. Homosexuality barely even exists in the film, a real crime because The Germs as well as the original L.A. punk underground had a sizeable gay presence. The silent treatment it gets in the movie is unforgivable. The fullest extent of Darby's homosexuality shown in the film is a futile attempt to make out with Rob Henley in one scene. Wowie zowie!

Kickboy Face, Rodney Rodent Bingenheimer, Amber, and The Screamers are recreated perfectly for the flick, but others aren't so well imitated: Brendan Mullen never had long hair when he ran the Masque, Belinda Carlisle was overweight until The Go-Gos broke up (she's Heidi Klum-skinny in the movie), Lorna Doom was rather chunky, too, and never tried to make out with Darby, etc. The gigs depicted in the movie were also incorrect. If The Germs are listed as technical consultants for the film they must have done a bunch of bullshitting (big surprise! heh), because I was there and remember things differently. Such as:

* The Halloween gig at the Hollywood Roosevelt didn't have bikers for bouncers; I don't know who came up with that brilliant idea, but that didn't happen. Actually, after four songs into the set the Hotel cut the PA off and Darby threw a temper tantrum screaming, "They won't let us play anywhere!" and smashed a mirrored post with a tire chain and ran out of the club. Since it was Halloween the band all wore KISS masks and finished the set playing instrumental versions of their songs. It was actually quite brilliant. The movie didn't show this!

* The Xmas show at The Whiskey A Go-Go didn't culminate in a fist fight on stage because Don Bolles jumped on stage. It was because Pat started a fire on stage and when a bouncer tried to put it out from the floor Pat kicked him in the face. When another bouncer tried to intervene he hit him upside the head with his guitar, and then HE ran out of the club. After the show bouncers were accosting us asking us where Pat lived and what his real name was. They were out for blood. It was not the John Wayne punch-out the movie showed. That was laughable!

* The Darby Crash Band show at The Starwood generated more boredom from the audience than genuine hostility. Darby's downfall was more than just lonely nights at Oki Dog, it was the way he threw himself into the Adam & The Ants glam trend which was quickly rejoindered by new kids in town Black Flag who planted stickers all over Hollywood screaming "Black Flag Kills Ants Dead!" . The newer wave of bands and kids from Long Beach and Orange County were seriously homophobic and weren't having any of this gayboy Germs-Screamers-Black Randy nonsense. The newer punks were scary and fascist in ways that Darby only played at.

If the director of this film reads this he'll probably be very defensive and say he did the best he could, yeah maybe. As I said, The Germs are pathological liars and might have taken him for a ride, treating the whole project like a joke. Maybe a movie can't reproduce what was musical lightning in a bottle. I just can't help thinking what Gus Van Sant or Gregg Araki could have done with the same material. Now that would be the Darby Crash movie I'd like to see.

Silverlakers

Two struggling rockers lived together in Hollywood until they heard about this new hipster hot spot called Silver Lake, which they promptly moved to lickety split. They rented a house up the hill from Spaceland, and shit doggy, they had it made, well almost. They were in their late thirties going on forty and knew they were going to catch on like wildfire in the local music scene. They knew nothing of the new bands that were popular, but as long as they pulled out their old Neil Young and Velvet Underground albums they were safe.

There was Kim, who refused to eat meat for "political" reasons. He came from Chicago, where not eating meat was pretty rebellious. He dyed a blue streak down his chestnut brown hair, strong stuff that. He also chain smoked, drank his weight in beer and avoided using deodorant. He wrote songs that were political if you read "between the lines". Kim believed in going green, which was why he never washed his Buick Riviera. It stank of umpteen spilled coffees.
Steve was his roommate. After losing his girlfriend to a paralegal he started wearing dresses on stage after seeing Falling James wearing one on the cover of Flipside Magazine. His band was called Bag Of Ice and had songs about drugs, only he never took drugs in his life. He was scared of them! What a pair.

Steve and Kim worked at the same office every day. In between business calls, Kim turned to Steve and said, "You know, dude, people in the hood don't know about our cool sounds. Let's throw a party and invite all of the coolest scenesters we know".
Steve stammered because he was out of drag and it made him nervous. "Whoa, Th-th-th-at's an awesome idea. We can look up all the coolest people in Flipside Magazine!"
"Yeah! Bitchen! Let's get a copy of the latest Flipside!" Kim slammed down his coffee mug.
"I heard if you invite the staff of the zine they'll party with you and give you a big write-up."
"Awesome!"
Their boss walked by and barked, "C'mon, break time's over. You're on the clock, guys".
They picked up their phones and made separate calls. Kim dialed and spoke, "Hello, this is Mister Richards. Am I speaking to a Mister Dwayne Franklin? Mr. Franklin, you have an outstanding credit card debt of $5,500. You have a choice of making a lump sum payment at a lower rate or you can pay the full amount in installments. What would be more convenient for you? Hello? Mister Franklin?"
Steve spoke into his phone. "Hello? Is this the Martinez residence? Hello, honey, is your daddy home? Do you know what time he comes home? No, that's okay, I'll call back at 7:30 PM".
With their cold calls finished, Kim grunted, "It's gonna be a tough one. I'm gonna need a refill!" He hoisted up his stained cup of coffee.

About a week later after many cold calls to the Flipside Magazine staff and to every scenester photographed in the latest issue, Steve and Kim got the party started.
Kim, with cigarette in mouth, proudly announced, "Safeway had a sale on Gallo Port and Vernor's Ginger Ale. We're gonna have some bangin' punch!"
Steve beamed. "Sweet!"
Steve had some party recipes of his own: he took some Jiffy Pop popcorn kernels and threw them in a stained paper bag and stapled it shut and then threw it into the microwave oven, setting it past the 3-minute mark.
Steve picked up the ringing phone. "What?" Steve's eyes bugged out in excitement. "A Gun Club tribute band wants to play an acoustic set in our backyard? Yeah, dog, invite 'em over".
After 90 seconds of buttery goodness wafting in the air smoke began emanating out of the microwave. Kim noticed the smoke pouring out, and freaked. "Steve! STEVE! STEVE!!! Get off the phone, man!"
Kim ran over with a Rite-Aid fire extinguisher and doused the little oven with it.

Ten minutes later, after airing out smoke with all the windows and doors left open, Kim asked, "Dude, what kind of records do we have?"
"Well, I have a Japanese pop band record and a CD by that all-girl band from Nebraska who hate men. That oughta cover things".
"Awesome. What happened to my Pansy Division record?"
"Your brother stole it after he came out."
"Oh yeah. I'll have to give him a call. I'll pretend to be Mister Richards, heh heh".
"That's the way, dude".

Later that night the party was going and the Port and Vernor's was a-flowing. After numerous urns were thrown up in by various Flipside staffers and scenesters riffled through their medicine cabinet, the big Gun Club tribute band went into their acoustic set. During the middle of their passionate rendition of "For The Love of Ivy" the police showed up and broke up the party. Everyone was resigned to the party being over and 90% of them left. Kim was fit to be tied.
"This is a fascist police state, damn it!" he yelled in his best stern bill collector baritone, cigarette dangling from his lips and a loyal bottle of Fat Tire in his right hand. A cop was ready to rush him but the party left-overs held Kim back and shushed him down.

Kim, still fortified by his drunken rebel reverie decided to provoke a healthy political debate with someone, anyone. He planted himself in front of a Japanese girl and a mole-like Flipsider. They were busy discussing the club scene in Silver Lake.
"I think people who eat meat are no different than the Nazis who ran the concentration camps!" he blurted out at them, defiantly staring them down.
"What?" the girl asked.
"Am I right or am I right? You're from Japan, aren't you? Did you know that Kobe beef is from Japan? Kobe has done more to ruin the meat packing industry in America than any other country!" He puffed his smoke at her like a mad bull.
"Um, yeah, okay", she groaned and got up to walk away.
"Great party, huh?" Kim asked the Flipside mole.
"Yeah", the geek writer mooned, "we gotta go out sometime and get bent, bro".
They high fived each other and a bromance was a brewin'.
"My dress is killing me", Steve twitched nervously, obviously too big for a Miss Sixty original.

The next morning, both hung over, aspirins and coffees by their telephones, they looked at each other, and moaned.
"Fuck, was that a p-p-p-party or what?"
"Killer, Steve. Flipside's promised to come to our next gig if we put them on the guest list."
"Sweet, dude. They're gonna write a review of my s-s-single once I get it pressed."
"That party - shit, that was the best investment we ever made, you know?"
"Yeah. I think somebody from a Polish fanzine was there last night."
"Bullshit!" Kim looked incredulous.
Their boss walked by and barked, "C'mon, break time's over. You're on the clock, guys".
They picked up their phones and made separate calls. Kim dialed and spoke, "Good morning, this is Mister Richards. Am I speaking to a Mister Dwayne Franklin?"
Steve spoke into his phone. "Hello? Is this the Martinez residence? Hello, honey, is your daddy home?"
Surely, success was waiting in the wings.